


Nat 20s

by Jaseish (curseofbunny)



Category: LoliRock (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Dungeons & Dragons References, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25874611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curseofbunny/pseuds/Jaseish
Summary: Some highschoolers play dnd, it's not that hard.A few snips about them playing dnd and being cute together
Relationships: Auriana/Lyna (LoliRock), Carissa (Lolirock)/Missy Robins (Lolirock)/Timothy (Lolirock), Iris/Mephisto (LoliRock), Lev/Talia (LoliRock), Nathaniel/Praxina (LoliRock)
Kudos: 4





	Nat 20s

**Author's Note:**

> I missed a few tags due to mobile (curse mobile...) but! Yes, here's a thing of mine I literally started last year and never had energy to post
> 
> Let me know how y'all like it!

Usually, Talia spent every day after classes practicing. She was always busy, always moving, always working and training to get better. She’d been doing competitive cheer since she was seven, and before that she’d been doing gymnastics since she could beg her parents for it. It was fun, she liked being busy.

What she _didn’t_ like was practice being cancelled. Izira wasn’t coming until six, and Talia’s phone had just died.

So she did what any rational teen in her situation would do.

She wandered the school.

It was getting dark outside the open campus, and her cheer uniform- long-sleeved top that slid down into a tiny skirt, tall socks, perfectly curled bow holding her long hair out of her face- didn’t do much against the chilly breeze.

But she did practice some moves on the cobblestone, grinning to herself as the thunder rumbled in the distance.

If this were a movie, some song would come on. She would dance, and her prince charming- or her princess charming- would melt out of the shadows and catch her as she dipped before romantically turning the routine into a tango of some sort.

Instead, fat raindrops started to fall, menacingly slow at first, then all at once. She hardly had time to bolt for shelter, bag in hand and laughing to herself.

As she got closer to the bathrooms to dry herself off, however, she heard murmurs in the distance.

Her eyebrows rose.

She knew that people other than cheerleaders and jocks stayed after school- clubs and stuff. She wasn’t dumb. However… this was the first time she’d been free.

She usually hated being free.

Talia slung her bag over her shoulder, combing her fingers through her messy bangs and trying to steady her breathing as she headed closer.

Okay… this was the arts department, she thinks. There’s the art room, the pottery room, the photography room, and…

Open door. Cool breeze flowing into an unlit classroom.

She has the spare thought of “horror movies?” before she shakes it off, taking pristine white shoes and bobbing ponytail into the classroom.

A bolt of lightning lights up the windows on the far side of the room, a crash of thunder accompanying her entry.

She pivots on her heel to accentuate the mood lighting, grinning breathlessly. “What’s up?”

The rest of the room’s occupants promptly scream.

She can’t help but double over laughing, her bag slipping down her arm and hair falling into her face.

Some of the occupants, after their hearts return to beating, laugh with her, but on the whole they stare in her direction, eyes wide.

She shakes her head, wiping her eyes. “Sorry, sorry. I had to. Ahhh… what’s going on here?”

Ten kids sitting in a lumpy circle around a big round table in the theatre room? She couldn’t help but blink in surprise. What were they doing…

A hairflip catches her eye.

“Prax?”

The captain of the cheerleading team, Praxina Nagendra, raises two fingers. She’d found some kind of white lace cardigan to sling over her own uniform, and she always insisted on wearing black tights underneath it too.

“Yo.”

Talia’s eyes swept over everyone else.

Some people she didn’t know, her fellow cheerleader Missy, her soccer captain Carissa, and a pair of popular girls who she didn’t know beyond their reputations, Iris and Lyna.

Yeah, this was a weird start.

She didn’t recognize any of the boys, either. Or one of the girls…

She waves.

“Uh, hi. What are you guys doing?”

A boy with platinum blonde hair and dark roots showing grinned as he waved his hands over the mass of paper and paperweights.

“Dungeons and Dragons.”

“Dungeons and… what? Is this some kind of kink thing? Like furries?” She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

Missy burst into titters, and Lyna shook her head sagely.

“Nope,” Some guy, she thought he might be Prax’s brother, leaned back in his chair, stretching. “Dragons. Role playing game.”

Talia nodded. “Role playing. Okay, so definitely a sex thing.”

The blonde with the mass of untamed curls (Iris?) flapped a hand, giggling. “No! It’s like, video games, but on paper! And math! Lots of math…”

The rest of the group nodded.

Talia felt a twist in her gut.

They seemed… so cozy.

Iris was halfway leaning on maybe-Prax’s brother, and the redhead was sharing a seat with Lyna in the teacher’s rolling chair. They were all calm and comfortable, letting the light from outside and one big mason jar candle in the middle illuminate the space.

Talia bit her lip.

Prax slid off her own chair, which had been backwards. “Do you want in?”

Talia usually didn’t… do stuff like this. Unexpected stuff. Unpredictable.

But she was soggy from the rain, and her blush still hadn’t disappeared.

And there were plenty of chairs… And it seemed like there was a ratty couch on one end of the table, with the platinum-haired boy settled alone on it. One of the other boys was sitting on a chair with his feet propped up on the cushions, but otherwise, there was plenty of room.

“What time is it?” Talia manages.

A half dozen phones light up, and four voices say some mish-mash of “3:59” and “4:01”.

Plenty of time.

Talia nods.

“I don’t have… anything better to do. So, how do you play?”

She ends up settled in on the couch, bag tossed haphazardly with the rest, her lucky pencil tapping against her bottom lip as the blonde boy- obviously dyed, given the dark eyebrows that wag at her and the crooked grin- explained how everything worked. She had to make a character… she didn’t understand how it really worked, so she went with the first suggestions that made any sense. A half-elf. Fighter. She had the most fun picking stats- putting some in gymnastics- and rolling the dice to determine random things. Leather armor and a simple backstory, and… maybe she’s getting the hang of this.

They return to the story of the game after her character is introduced, being found tied to a tree. The group do a quick side quest to find the horse she’d insisted on buying (she spent the summer at a ranch once, and couldn’t get the mental image of her character on a pretty blonde pinto out of her head). So they find the horse and her character joins the story properly.

She isn’t great at the game, but two hours pass in a pinch. It isn’t long before Prax’s phone is lighting up, and Talia realizes that her ride had arrived.

She rose, waving two fingers at them, smiling warmly. “Thank you! That was really fun!”

Iris leaned back in her chair and smiled back. “See you around, T!”

Nathaniel- proud owner of a hyper-intelligent half-orc- waves her goodbye. Auriana, who had a “homebrewed” succubus race, giggles as she waves. Even Mephisto, Prax’s twin, bids her adieu.

And she’s barely out the door before she feels fingers loosely catching her wrist.

She turns slowly.

Lev.

The blonde.

He offers a sheepish smile. “I should be going too, want me to walk you out front?”

She weighs her options.

Walk the dark, stormy hallways alone, or walk them with the cute boy whose knees she’d been bumping for the last two hours?

It was easy to smile and nod. “Yeah, totally.”

He waves a quick ‘goodbye’ to the room before he adjusts the strap of his messenger bag and follows her. And then, it’s just the pair of them alone.

Over the past few hours, Talia had mostly dried off. Her hair was a bit wavy now, but was largely untouched. And he… was just fidgeting with the strap of his bag, walking next to her.

She hums. “So…”

He glances at her. “Yeah?”

“Do that stuff often?” Talia glanced at him. He seemed the type, now that she’d played it for a while. She was a sucker for math, and the game had it in abundance.

He nodded. “Yeah, we meet twice a week. This was one of the first times that everyone got to come on the same day, so I was surprised. I’m used to… well, a split timeline.”

Talia raised an eyebrow. “Split… timeline?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Like, one group has to do x, y, and z, and the other does a, b, and c. And they’re all working towards the same alphabet, but I can’t do it without everyone getting pieces to the puzzle.”

It sounded like it made sense.

“So who always comes?”

“Iris, Mephisto, Auriana, Nathaniel, and Timothy. Everyone else comes on different days to accomodate for sports stuff.”

Talia couldn’t argue the ‘sports stuff’ angle. “Yeah, I get it.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Do you think you’ll ever make it again?”

She bit her lip.

It had been fun, and she wanted to, but she was so busy. What could she even do? Split herself in half? She was in soccer with Carissa and cheer with Missy and Prax. She couldn’t exactly skip on either, and she had a feeling those were the days that he was talking about.

“I don’t have a lot of free time…”

Lev shrugged. He didn’t even seem that upset, just mellow. “Hey, I get it. Just wanted to know if I’d see that pinto again.”

That’s about when they get to the front of the school.

She glances around. There's her sister's shiny silver car, but… no others.

"Who's picking you up?" Talia squeezed the straps of her bag, looking around nervously.

"Oh, I walk home." Lev nudged her shoulder with his. "I didn't think it would get dark this early, so I should really get going."

She frowns.

The rain had made everything dark. What did he mean, walk home?

"Wait!"

He paused, bleach-blonde head turning back to her.

"Izira can drive you home." Talia shrugged her bag up higher. "C'mon."

He wavers.

The rain is still spattering the concrete around them, and his head dips. His hair is starting to stick against his forehead, and hers is doing the same.

"Lev." Talia holds a hand in his direction. "Come on."

He's in the car before she is.

If she didn't know better, she'd say that he looked nervous, a little ashamed. Fidgeting with his bag awkwardly next to her.

She reaches over and squeezes his hand.

"Chill. It's okay."

Slowly, Lev looks up to meet her eyes.

He smiles.

They drop him off at a house with a few layers of paint missing, halloween decorations still up in march, with an old porch swing swaying in the wind. There's even a boarded up window. Talia knows it's not nice to judge…

But this boy came from here?

He waves sheepishly before bolting for the door.

Izira whistles.

"What's that for?" Talia leaned forwards.

"I dunno, just admiring my future brother-in-law's ass."

Talia swats at her, and they dissolve into a playfight, complete with shrieking giggles.

The next day is another practice day. No chance to catch Lev, or any of them.

The day after that is a meeting with hsr guidance counselor about her future, followed by leaving school early for lunch with her moms.

Then it's Friday. Another rainy day.

Another cancelled practice.

This time, she's rushing to the empty classroom and making it there before anyone else- even her cheer teammates.

Lev is there, however. Like a fixture of the room. Like a prince in a tower. He has one pencil behind his ear while he chews on the eraser of another, looking over his notebook.

Talia runs in and, before he can even look up, pokes her head between the notes and his face.

Lev squawks and jolts back, face immediately going red. He sputters, looking off-guard and embarrassed at his own reaction.

Talia kissed the tip of his nose before she can think better of the action.

She wasn't impulsive. She wasn't the one who did things without thinking. However…

"What was that?" Lev asks, voice cracking.

"Rolling initiative." Talia responded matter-of-factly, as if her own anxiety levels weren't spiking. "So how did I do?"

"Um- what did you roll for?"

"Getting to join dnd again?"

Lev's face, previously so embarrassed, broke out into a grin so big that he had to use his notes to hide it.

"I thought you were too busy."

"And I," Talia nodded. "Think I can work around that."

"What changed your mind?"

"I think you already know that answer."

He didn't respond.

The entire right side of her body was warm from how closely she sidled up to him.


End file.
